VI

THE PLACE OF LITERATURE IN EDUCATION

By NOWELL SMITH

Head Master of Sherborne School

Education is a subject upon which everyone—­or
at least every parent—­considers himself
entitled to have opinions and to express them.
But educational treatises or the considered views of
educational experts have a very limited popularity,
and in fact arouse little interest outside the circle
of the experts themselves. Even the average teacher,
who is himself, if only he realised it, inside the
circle, pays little heed to the broader aspects of
education, chiefly, no doubt, because in the daily
practice of the art of education he cannot step aside
and see it as a whole; he cannot see the wood for
the trees. The indifference of laymen however
is mainly due to the fact that educational theory,
like other special subjects, inevitably acquires a
jargon of its own, an indispensable shorthand, as it
were, for experts, but far too abstract and technical
for outsiders.

And his technical language too often reacts upon the
actual ideas of the educational theorist, who tends
to lose sight of the variety of concrete boys and
girls in his abstract reasonings, necessary as these
are. We are apt to forget that what is sauce for
the goose may not be sauce for the gander, and still
more perhaps that what is sauce for the swan may not
be sauce for either of these humbler but deserving
fowl. But it is certain that in discussing education
we ought constantly to envisage the actual individuals
to be educated. Otherwise our “average
pupil of fifteen plus” is only too likely to
become a mere monster of the imagination, and the intellectual
pabulum, which we propose to offer, suited to
the digestion of no human boy or girl in “this
very world, which is the world of all of us.”